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My laptop computer don't recognize the hard drive. Plus, I read the instruction manual, and it said you should format your drive if your os is windows xp or vista. Please suggest how to format the drive, and how to let the computer recognize the hard drive. P.S. I purchased the unit yesterday.
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Apple will recognize a FAT 32 format. Connect the drive to another machine - a PC. Copy your data to this computer, format the drive to FAT32, copy your data back and it chould be accessable to the MAC system again.
You need to format your hard disk. Please note that formatting will erase all you data from the hard disk and all the software including the Operating system.
If you have your OS master CD you can insert it in the cd/dvd drive and restart the laptop. This will detect the OS CD and try to install it. In the installation process there is an option "Format your hard drive". You should select that option. Then it will format, mark the bad sectors, create a new boot sector and install the OS. You will be just fine.
You might have to go in Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Manager ... from the Control Panel - and then Format that disk before it will be recognized as a Letter drive like D or G or something like that.
I have a WD and another brand of external drives. And I had a similar issue with the 2nd one - I had to format it 1st.
A customer of mine formatted a drive for Mac OS X and thus cannot use it in WIndows. Mac can read NTFS from Windows I believe, but Windows cannot read the Mac OS X format.
If you are planning to use the Seagate Hard Drive on a PC and MAC better format it on your MAC Computer thru disc Utility and choose MS-DOS. This should solve the problem.
Mac has the ability to recognize a FAT, NTFS and MAC File System for the hard drive but the PC Computer cannot recognize MAC File System.
Check on your mac the File system of your hard drive. MAC OS Extended MAC OS Extended (Journaled)
If this is the file system then you now know that it will not be read by PC.
Also formating it with the use of PC will only result in an NTFS File System, and it can be read by Mac but it is only in a Read Only mode. You cannot copy paste or even erase on the drive having an NTFS on a MAC.
Hello,
If you can see the drive in Applications --> utilities --> Disk Utility, then you will be able to reformat it in the Mac OS format and read it.
Good day, Damien
I've read on other web forums that the recover disk only works with the original drive partiions. There's a hidden partition on the original drive that the recover disk uses to install the OS (maybe other software too). You'll need to clone/copy the original disk partitions to the new hard drives and then you'll be able to use the recovery disk.
You shouldn't need an instruction manual. Insert the USB plug into a USB port. Windows will recognize a new device. Then go to "My Computer". Find the USB drive, right-click on it and choose format. You probably want to format it as FAT32 if you are going to use this drive on multiple computers (for compatibility), otherwise format in NTFS.
You don' t say what OS or even type of computer (PC, Mac, Windows XP, 98, vista etc) you are running, or whether the drive has been used before. If it's a new drive then it probably needs formatting, so you can allow the OS to do that. If it contains data that you need then DO NOT allow the OS to format it.
If you know it is formatted & contains data, then it sounds like the OS is not recognising the format. Windows 98 typically won't recognise NTFS disks formatted on Windows XP for example or Linux Ext3/4 format disks won't be recognised by Windows. In the latter case, you can download a free driver which will do that for you - google Ext 4 and Windows.
I have a Western digital model wd2500b007-rnn and I cannot get either my PC or my laptop to recognize the drive. I isolated the drive to another computer with the same error. It says USB device not reognized. I also tried a different port. I have not tried different cables. Can I retrieve the old data on the drive?
Did you find a resolution for this? I am having the same problem. None of my PCs can recognize the drive. Formatting seems to be the only choice but I need to recover my old data first.
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